23 May: difficult planting time

Tuesday, 23 May 2017

My back hurt something fierce from schlepping my plants around yesterday evening.  It felt on the verge of going into a spasm.  What is this?  My back used to be the strongest part…well, with an occasional but infrequent blow out every few years.

In fact, what is the deal with how long it takes to stand up from a chair after sitting for awhile in the evening?  I was wondering that just last night.

I would like to have stayed home today with Smokey and a book.

I’m not quite done with Hope in the Dark.  Even a short book goes slowly at planting time.  And now I have this heavy tome from the library:

This morning, early, a strong buffeting wind had woken me up.  The wind still prevailed.  I had struggled mightily to get my knee brace on; it took two tries and Allan’s help to get it right. Despite my back, my hope for today was to get cosmos and more planted at The Depot, Long Beach welcome sign, two Long Beach Parks, the Anchorage, and the Kite Museum.

Ilwaco Post Office garden will soon get some cosmos.

lilies and Stipa gigantea, my favourite ornamental grass, at the post office.

As we made a welfare check on the new nicotiana in the garden boat at Time Enough Books, I felt so very cold that we went back home (two blocks away) so I could change into warm winter pants and shirt.  I left the knee brace at home; it does not work with heavier clothes.

my mother’s clivia in flower, glowing in the front window

A patch of strangely late blooming Tulip ‘Akebono’

Another clivia blossom had fallen.

Smokey’s nap disturbed

The Depot Restaurant

cosmos going in

Allan’s photo, Allium heads and my head

cosmos in (Allan’s photo)

delicate variegated saxifrage (Allan’s photos)

closer

north side of dining deck

Despite my check of two weather forecasts, both of which promised cool windy weather all day, the sun suddenly came out.  So hot!  I said to Allan that I had to go home (two miles south) and change clothes again.  Every year, there is a day about this time when I have to learn all over again the necessity of having summer and winter clothes with us at all times.

I struggled again with the knee brace.  Some days it just is not easy.  When it is on, it helps me enormously.

Smokey still snoozing.

Frosty wanting a belly rub. He never bites or scratches, so he does get many.

Calvin’s nap disturbed.

Skooter has things to do during the day and is rarely found at home napping.

Long Beach

We started to set up the Long Beach welcome sign planting and I realized the front of the sign’s soil was too low.  Why hadn’t I added enough soil earlier on?  (Later, I decided it was because tulips had been in the way.) This necessitated an emergency trip to get soil from city works.  We took the chance of leaving unplanted gallons of Agastache ‘Summer Glow’ just sitting in the garden.  (Because one of Todd’s new public plantings in Ocean Park got completely dug up and stolen in the night last week, I’m feeling extra concern this week.)

When we got to city works, we saw this shocking sight:

Noooo! The city crew had used most of the heaping pile of Soil Energy!

We managed to scrape up just enough. (Allan’s photo)

in the process of adding soil and pulling the damnable horsetail along the back of the welcome sign bed (Allan’s photo)

low and miserable looking soil

battling it out with horsteail and ripening bulb foliage, trying to not block the lights that shine on the sign.

much better (Allan’s photo)

welcome sign, after

I have always planted yellow Agyranthemum ‘Butterfly’ in this planter.  Because it takes so much deadheading, I’m trying the Summer Glow agastache in hope of an easier maintenance yellow effect.  (Garden designer Lucy Hardiman says “Yellow stops the eye” in drive by public plantings.)

Agastache ‘Summer Glow’

undeadheaded Agyranthemum ‘Butterfly’

added Cosmos ‘Sensation’ in the back, and Cosmos ‘Sonata’ (shorter, so as not to overshadow the agastaches) in front.

I decided to skip the Long Beach parks for now and go to the Anchorage…but on the way we saw a perfect and rare parking spot right next one of the two planters we had not added to yesterday.  We had to take that opportunity.  Usually, I end up carrying plants for half a block to this planter and the one across the street.

I do not think we have ever before gotten this prime spot.

Getting the Cosmos ‘Sonata’ and two Agastache ‘Mexican Giant’ into those two planters completes phase two of three of the Long beach planter planting.

The Anchorage Cottages

We had to get to the Anchorage by four o clock because of a Situation I’d learned about in an email late last night, after the plants for the Anchorage were already loaded: The parking lots were being resurfaced and so we could not park by the gardens today or tomorrow.  With a big three day holiday weekend coming up, and being determined to get the cosmos and some other plants added to the garden this week, and with today being the only day it would fit well into our schedule, I spent some time last night plotting alternative routes into the garden.  This required getting there while Manager Beth was still working in order to access the office courtyard via the office.

Our good friend Mitzu in the office. (Allan’s photo)

The center courtyard and the south courtyard can be accessed from the west and south lawns by walking around the cottages, without setting one foot on the parking lots, whose stripes were being painted as we gardened.

We had to slither along spaces like this, a secret path between the office and center courtyards that had appeared with the recent painting.

While I planted, I set Allan to clearing out the old scilla flowers and foliage; it is rampant in the center courtyard garden.

before; last week it was a hazy of blue.

why I never ever plant scilla in a garden bed

after. I thought it looked too bare so gave Allan two “Bells of Ireland” and a campanula to add to it.

looking back just before slithering around the side of the office building to depart.

By where we parked, on the grassy road north of the cottages, lives a Fish and Wildlife officer who has a bear trap at the ready.

Allan’s photo

Sometimes, our  local “fish cops’ are featured on a telly show:

from Rugged Justice: Releasing a bear into the wild if said bear has made itself at home scavenging in town.

But I digress.  By now, I knew we would not get cosmos planted in the Long Beach parks today.  I hoped that we might find the oomph to plant up the pocket garden at the Kite Museum.

We drove there.  We looked at it from inside the car.

Imagine the cold whipping of the wind, now 23 mph.

I couldn’t do it, so we went home at 6:30.  Tonight, I will watch Deadliest Catch and be embarrassed that I wimped out.  It was better for the plants to wait till tomorrow…yes, that is it.

working on The Deadliest Catch…puts my wimpiness to shame

At home, I got to make a couple of erasures from the work board, albeit not as many as I had hoped.

Tomorrow: planting time continues.